BLAZING TRAILS

24 April 20, 2016
WINDY CITY TIMES
Out local poet on
his first book, awards
and Jimmy Carter
BY TERRI-LYNNE WALDRON
Poet Ralph Hamilton recently released his first
book of poems, entitled Teaching a Man to Unstick
His Tail. The book addresses the spectrum
of love and its coupling with pain, and Hamilton
tackles issues of love and loss and opens
up about the people that have touched his life.
The Evanston resident talked with Windy City
Times about who inspired his work, his break
from writing and the Lucian Freud painting
that became the book cover.
Windy City Times: Where did your love of
poetry come from?
Ralph Hamilton: It started early and I put it
aside for many years—then, it recaptured me.
I was always a dreamy child and spent more
time with animals in trees than with people.
[Laughs]
WCT: Were there certain poets whose work
you read and who you looked up to?
RH: When I was a boy, I loved [Rudyard]
Kipling. Partially I was raised in the Bahamas,
which was then still colonial Britain’s empire.
I went to a British school there so that’s what
we read. The poem’s and stories appealed to a
boy’s imagination.
WCT: As a young boy, was it easy for you to
decipher the meaning behind poems?
RH: Poets often work at many different levels
and there’s a way in which all poems are songs.
One may not understand it but still be enchanted
by a kind of lingering music in the
language. And the second reading may draw
you in, in a different way. Some poets write
in a style that is immediately accessible and
some don’t.
WCT: When did you write your first poem
and what was it about?
RH: I wrote poems as a child all the time but
I can’t remember what any of them were about.
[Laughs] I was a newspaper editor in college,
and when we were putting the paper together
we had to print the columns out on a sort of
teletype printer machine, then cut it out and
glue it to a piece of paper. Often we would realize
that there was eight inches of blank space
we had to fill. I would run in the other room
and dash off a poem, type it up and it would
go in that slot.
WCT: Did you maintain your interest in poetry
writing after college?
RH: For almost 30 years after that, I stopped
writing; when I was about 49, I started again.
WCT: Why did you stop?
RH: Life. I got a job working in the Jimmy
Carter administration as special assistant to
Carter’s appointment secretary. I volunteered
in his campaign and suddenly I found myself
working in the White House at the age of 21.
From there I went back and forth between
public policy, foundations and academia for 28
years.
WCT: What made you want to get back into
it?
RH: I had been reading poetry again and
began writing again and I decided that I was
ready to commit to it full-time. I went back
and got another MFA in poetry from Bennington
[his first master’s was in religion and literature
from Harvard] and got involved in RHINO
[an independent poetry journal] and became
the editor.
WCT: Your first book of poems, Teaching
a Man to Unstick His Tail, was released last
year. How many years worth of poems did
you draw from to complete this book?
RH: Most of the poems were written in the
last five years. Through several years I was
writing fairly consistently on issues of loss and
the difficulty of love. Looking back, I realized
that there were a group of what turned out to
be 100 or more poems that seemed in different
ways to be linked. It’s about the fundamental
role of human connection. In a several-year
period my mother passed away, my brother
died and my relationship of more than 20 years
came apart.
WCT: The book cover shows a man and a
dog lying down, with the man’s arm wrapped
around the dog. Why did you choose that Lucian
Freud painting as the cover?
RH: I had admired Lucian Freud for years.
He [was] Sigmund Freud’s grandson. Mostly
set in hermetic domestic interiors, the book’s
portraits of loss strip away protection. The poems
probe and expose the messy, stained vitality
of mortal flesh/consciousness beneath the
shield of personality and persona that often
obscures reality. While suggesting no equivalence,
Freud’s paintings have often been said
to approach their subject’s similarly.
Further, the nudity, the presence of both
human and dog, the classical and sexual resonance
of the drapery/sheets, and the pulpy
physicality of the paint itself reflect images,
tensions and evocative inversions explicit in
many of the poems, including the title.
WCT: Is it important to refer to yourself as
a “gay poet?”
RH: I am not sure of the distinction that
works for me. I am gay and I do write poetry
and those are both true and I’m proud of
both. But I don’t usually make one of them
an adjective for the other as in, “I’m a poetic
gay.” [Laughs] There’s no doubt that some of
the poems have what someone may call a gay
sensibility. particularly the ones using humor. I
love it when a poem breaks your heart and then
makes you laugh.
WCT: Your book has been nominated for
the Lambda Literary Awards—an award ceremony
that elevates the profile of LGBT literature—in
the category of gay poetry. How
does it feel being nominated?
RH: It is delightful. As a writer more than
anything, one hopes to be heard. When one is
a finalist for an award, it is particularly a profound
validation when it’s been heard.
Teaching a Man to Unstick His Tail is available
at SiblingRivalryPress.com or Amazon.
com. Find out more about Hamilton at RalphHamiltonPoetry.com/.
Poet Ralph Hamilton.
Photo by Chris Walker
Theresa Volpe, advisor to CCM’s LGBTQ Inclusion Committee, with wife Mercedes Santos
and their three children.
Photo by Hal Baim
Children’s museum
celebrating diversity
Navy Pier’s Chicago Children’s Museum celebrates
International Family Equality Day on
Sunday, May 1, and will kick off two months
of programming honoring the diversity of
what constitutes family.
On that day, activities will include events
at the International Family Equality Day Hospitality
and Resource Room (10:30 a.m.-4:30
p.m.), as well as “Family Flags” (12:30-2
p.m.) and “Rainbow Parachute” (2:15 p.m.).
Throughout May and June, events will include:
—LGBTQ Resources, Thursday, June 23,
5-7:30 p.m.: Resource tables for information
relevant to gender expansive children and
the LGBTQ parenting community, including
family-friendly book suggestions and teacher
resources;
—Rainbow Staircase, May 1-June 30, during
museum hours: Transform the three-story
staircase into a giant rainbow by adding colorful
ribbons on each visit;
—What Makes a Family? Chalk Wall, May
1-June 30, during museum hours: Share ideas
about what makes a family on the 20-footlong
community chalkboard; and
—Collect a Color, Thursday, June 23, 6:30-
7:30 p.m.: Answer questions about color and,
in the process, collect colored beads to make
a rainbow bracelet or keychain.
See http://www.chicagochildrensmuseum.
org/index.php/about/accessibility-inclusion.
Mary Lambert
at NU April 26
Grammy nominee Mary Lambert—possibly
best known for singing with Macklemore and
Ryan Lewis on the song “Same Love”—will
discuss the art of songwriting (along with a
special performance).
The free event will take place Tuesday, April
26, 7-8:30 p.m., on the Evanston campus of
Northwestern University at Lutkin Hall, 700
University Pl. Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot
will be the moderators.
See http://www.northwestern.edu/writingarts/.